New discovery: light can make water evaporate without heat

CTOnews.com, November 2 (Xinhua) in our daily life, evaporation occurs around us all the time, but human beings still lack enough in-depth understanding of evaporation. The latest research results show that in some cases, light can make water evaporate without heat.

The researchers preserved water in a spongy material called hydrogel and observed that it evaporated faster than the water received heat or heat.

Through a series of experiments and simulations, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has come to a startling conclusion: under certain conditions, on the interface between water and air, light can directly make water evaporate without heating.

The researchers say this phenomenon may play a role in the formation and evolution of fog and clouds, so it is important to include climate models to improve their accuracy. It may play an important role in many industrial processes, such as solar desalination, and may replace the step of converting sunlight into heat in the first place.

CTOnews.com is enclosing the reference paper address: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2312751120